


Still People

by telm_393



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Luther gets shot in the gut when he's fifteen years old, and it just gets worse from there.Vanya stays with him.





	Still People

**Author's Note:**

> Here's some Vanya and Luther for you! They're grappling with their mortality. I'll never stop whumping them, not ever. 
> 
> (Obligatory "this is Luther friendly".)

Luther gets shot in the gut when he's fifteen years old.

The wound is objectively life-threatening, but he makes it. Vanya doesn't even consider the possibility that he won't. She barely even notices he got hurt in the first place. He’s strong, he heals fast, and it’s not like he hasn’t gotten shot before. He goes back to training as soon as he can, even though Mom says he should wait until all of his stitches are out and the wound’s well and truly healed. Personally, Vanya thinks that Mom’s right, since there’s still a risk of infection and all, but she doesn’t mention it. It doesn’t matter what she thinks.

Luther does what’s expected of him, and Vanya forgets about her brief worry. Luther’s Number One, strong and very, very special. He’ll be fine. He always is.

No one expects him to almost pass out at the dinner table, slurring his words like he’s drunk, because no one expects what’s left of his wound to get so badly infected. It looks ugly, too, pus and everything, and Dad wonders, with uncharacteristic frustration in his voice, why Luther didn’t mention it, as if Luther would ever mention something like that. He probably didn’t even know it was a big deal.

By the time they get Luther to medical, he’s barely conscious, baking with fever and rambling nonsense.

Allison heard a rumor that he went to sleep for a while, and Luther’s eyes cloud over and then they slide shut.

It’s touch and go for a couple of days after that, and medical’s so crowded that Vanya can barely breathe, but she doesn’t leave to go to her room, even though she’s pretty sure no one would notice if she was gone. She just sits in a dinner chair she dragged in and watches Luther, too scared to look away. She looked away from Five, and he disappeared. She can’t let that happen to Luther too.

Allison and Klaus cry, Diego paces, Ben holds Luther’s hand and speaks to him in a voice so low that no one can make out what he’s saying, and Mom and Pogo and Dad consult with each other in low voices.

On the third day, when Luther’s in critical but stable condition, Dad drags the others away for training, though they protest, but Vanya stays behind. She bets Dad didn’t even notice she didn’t follow him.

Vanya’s the only one in the room when Luther wakes up, Mom and Pogo having drifted out of the room and Dad with the others. Vanya hopes he won’t notice her as she gets up from her chair to call someone for help, but then Luther rolls his head to look at her and she freezes.

Luther’s eyes are glassy and his face is blank, but when he sees her his expression transforms into confusion. “Vanya?” he asks. “Why are you here?”

“You’re my brother,” Vanya blurts out.

Luther’s eyebrows draw together. “I know. You’re my sister. ”

Vanya shakes her head. “No, I mean, that’s why I’m here. You’re my brother.” _And I don’t have to train, so I don’t have anywhere more important to be._

“What happened?” Luther asks, sounding as lost and small as Vanya always feels, and she gets out of the chair she’s been curled up in and takes a few hesitant steps closer. He stretches out a hand.

She’s not sure if he’s reaching out to her. She doesn’t see why he would. They used to talk when they were little, before the Academy took off, when Luther didn’t have anyone else to talk to, but they don’t really anymore. Vanya’s not part of the team, and the team is everything to Luther now, as all-consuming as space used to be. He always promises to protect her, but she thinks it’s because she’s ordinary. Innocent.

They’re practically strangers at this point, she tells herself, even though he doesn’t feel like a stranger to her and she knows that she’s not really a stranger to him. No one’s a stranger to Luther if he’s in close proximity to them. He thinks it matters that they live together, and maybe it does.

They grew up together, they’re still growing up together, and sometimes he’ll sit down on the couch when she’s practicing violin and watch. He remembers all the names of the composers. He likes Stravinsky best.

Vanya crosses her arms protectively over her stomach, and doesn’t take his hand.

“You got sick,” she says. “From the gunshot wound.”

“That’s impossible. It healed. I got better.”

Vanya shakes her head. “Your stitches tore, Luther, and then what was left of the wound got infected.”

Luther blinks slowly. “Oh. Usually I get better,” he informs her as if she doesn’t know. “It’s easy to get better. I didn’t know I could get worse. I didn’t know.”

Vanya says nothing. She just stands there and breathes. She bears witness. It’s the only thing she knows how to do.

“No one ever told me,” Luther says, words slurring. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Vanya says. “Maybe he...maybe no one thought it’d happen.”

“Could I have...” Luther starts, and then he shivers with his whole body, chattering teeth and all, and his eyes almost close, and Vanya wonders why there’s no panic button in this room and why she hasn’t gone to get Mom already because she thinks he’s going to pass out, but then he doesn’t and she’s still standing next to him, rooted to the floor. “Was I dying?” Luther asks. “Could I have died?” He waits a moment, and then he asks, almost in a whisper, “Am I gonna die?”

Vanya wants to say _no, of course not,_ but words fail her because she heard Mom say Luther’s not out of the woods yet, and by the time she opens her mouth she’s already given the truth away.

Luther’s eyes fill with a delirious mix of confusion and horror, and of course he didn’t consider it before, that he could die young. That he’s going to die young. Dad never told him, and Luther doesn’t really listen to things Dad doesn’t tell him.

“But what happens if I die?” he asks. “I can’t be Number One if I’m dead. One’s an important number.”

Right. One’s the most important number, the number Dad’s trying to polish into a mirror image of himself, and the anger Vanya’s always feeling nearly spills from her lips. _Maybe you’d be better off dead. Maybe we’d all be better off dead instead of here, maybe it’d save us. At least you’d die a person instead of the toy soldier our father’s making out of you._

Vanya bites the words back, guilt gnawing at her for even thinking like that. “It’s okay,” Vanya says, her voice coming out weak, unsure. “You’re not going to die.”

But Luther doesn’t take anyone at face value anymore except Dad, so he keeps pushing. “What if they can’t fix me? What if I go to sleep and never wake up?” His lip wobbles, and he looks so much like a little kid that Vanya feels like one too, the girl who listened patiently while Luther talked to her about space, who played catch with him because Diego cheated, who tried to teach him how to read music.

Her stomach hurts. _Of course you might die, Luther. You’re still a person, and people die all the time._ A tear slips down Luther’s cheek, and then his face crumples and from one moment to the next he’s sobbing. “I don’t wanna die, Vanya. I don’t wanna never wake up.”

“You won’t die,” Vanya says, anxious enough that she feels like she’s going to throw up. If Dad comes in, he’s going to be angry at Luther for crying and at Vanya for making him cry and it’ll be a mess and she really, really doesn’t want any of that. “Just...” she takes his hand, finally, and regrets it when he squeezes. Gasping in pain, she says, “Luther, not so hard, you’re holding my hand too hard!”

He loosens his grip. It’s still too tight, but Vanya’s not worried he’ll break her fingers anymore. He lets out a sob, and Vanya feels the tears of pain that came to her eyes when Luther grabbed her hand overflow.

“You won’t let me die, right?” Luther asks, voice pleading, and Vanya knows she can’t do anything but pretend her words are worth something, so she steps closer to Luther, close enough that her stomach is touching the edge of the gurney he’s on. She rests their joined hands on his chest and puts her other arm behind his head, leaning in to give him a steady look.

She feels like it’s been a long time since they’ve actually met each other’s eyes, and Vanya’s heart hurts when she looks at him. She thought that all she’d see was a stranger, but instead it’s her brother staring up at her like she has the answers to any questions at all, and he needs her.

For once, he needs her, so she tells him, in a voice so sure that it doesn’t even sound like her own, “I’ll do everything in my power to not let you die. I promise.”

Luther smiles with groggy relief, delirious enough to not realize that Vanya’s promise isn’t all that impressive, that she’s ordinary, not even part of the team he cares about so much, that he’s momentarily lost his mind with fever and fear and that’s the only reason they’re even having something that passes as a conversation.

“I love you, Vanya,” he tells her, all the conviction in the world in his voice.

She gives him a gentle smile and nods, but doesn’t say it back. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Will you be here when I w...” he starts, and then, as if a switch has been turned off in his brain, his hand goes slack around Vanya’s and his eyes roll into the back of his head. He begins to convulse, and Vanya clutches his shoulders as if she can make it stop.

No, no, no, Dad’ll kill her if she lets his favorite die, and she promised Luther, she promised, and she doesn’t care anymore that nothing she says actually means anything.

Vanya tears herself away from Luther, runs out of medical, and screams for help at the top of her lungs, because there’s only so much she can do.

Luther lives, and Vanya stumbles off to her room to cry until she’s sick.

She’s not there when Luther wakes up.

She tells herself he probably didn’t even notice she was gone, and she never asks.


End file.
